Singaporean Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat (王瑞傑) yesterday announced additional support measures of S$8 billion (US$5.84 billion) to cushion the blow from the COVID-19 pandemic, extending wage subsidies and aiming to shore up the hard-hit aviation and hospitality sectors.
The new set of measures, announced almost three months after the last package, adds to Singapore’s total pledged pandemic aid of almost S$100 billion, Heng, who is also minister of finance, said in a taped speech.
While Singapore has managed to bring virus cases under control, the global economy “remains very weak,” Heng said.
Photo: AFP
“We must continue to adapt to the rapidly changing situation. We designed our measures to give us flexibility for adjustments as the crisis progresses. Some of these measures are ending soon,” he said.
The latest measures would not require any additional use of past reserves beyond what was already approved, Heng said.
Unused expenditures from earlier budgets would help fund the latest measures, allowing the government to narrow the projected budget deficit this fiscal year by S$100 million since the fourth package was announced in May, to S$74.2 billion.
Further support was deemed necessary as the city-state has fallen into a technical recession, retail and hospitality sectors are struggling to recover from months of mobility restrictions, and officials have warned of further retrenchments through year-end.
Singapore’s economy shrank a record 42.9 percent on an annualized basis in the second quarter from the previous three months, data last week showed, with Singaporean Minister for Trade and Industry Chan Chun Sing (陳振聲) warning there could be “recurring waves of infection and disruption.”
Export figures released yesterday showed tentative signs of recovery in July, with non-oil domestic shipments jumping 6 percent from the same time last year, beating estimates for a second straight month.
The New Taiwan dollar is on the verge of overtaking the yuan as Asia’s best carry-trade target given its lower risk of interest-rate and currency volatility. A strategy of borrowing the New Taiwan dollar to invest in higher-yielding alternatives has generated the second-highest return over the past month among Asian currencies behind the yuan, based on the Sharpe ratio that measures risk-adjusted relative returns. The New Taiwan dollar may soon replace its Chinese peer as the region’s favored carry trade tool, analysts say, citing Beijing’s efforts to support the yuan that can create wild swings in borrowing costs. In contrast,
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
VERTICAL INTEGRATION: The US fabless company’s acquisition of the data center manufacturer would not affect market competition, the Fair Trade Commission said The Fair Trade Commission has approved Advanced Micro Devices Inc’s (AMD) bid to fully acquire ZT International Group Inc for US$4.9 billion, saying it would not hamper market competition. As AMD is a fabless company that designs central processing units (CPUs) used in consumer electronics and servers, while ZT is a data center manufacturer, the vertical integration would not affect market competition, the commission said in a statement yesterday. ZT counts hyperscalers such as Microsoft Corp, Amazon.com Inc and Google among its major clients and plays a minor role in deciding the specifications of data centers, given the strong bargaining power of
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
RSS